I’m intimidated by Instagram Stories.

Whenever I create one on my phone for my personal or Build Book Buzz Instagram account, I spend too much time playing around with options and figuring out which ones might work best.

When the Young People do it, they create something interesting and engaging in just a few minutes. Me? At least 15 minutes. At. Least.

So, with the goal of getting better at this, I went looking for how-to information. I found videos, guides, templates, tools, and author examples.

If they help me, they might help you, right? So here are links to the information I found that was most helpful to me. I hope some of it helps you, too.

How-to articles

If you like to learn by reading step-by-step instructions, you’ll appreciate these articles.

Instagram Stories: What They Are and How to Make One Like a Pro

HubSpot is one of my go-to sites for marketing information, and the company didn’t disappoint with this step-by-step tutorial. It’s written for a business audience, but don’t let that stop you. Authorship is a business, so this is a good fit for you.

Within the article, Hubspot links to Instagram Story templates you can download after completing the opt-in form. I’ve included that information below, in the “tools” section of this article.

How to create an Instagram Story

Mashable’s instructions are geared to personal, rather than business, Instagram accounts, but the information still applies. If you have two Instagram accounts – personal and author – it’s best to practice with your personal account, anyway.

Instagram Stories 101: Our Guide to Stickers, Effects, Key Settings and More

Don’t let the “Making an Insta Story is a lot like Snapchat” subhead in this CNET article scare you off (because, really, are you a big Snapchat user?). There are some good details in this one.

How-to videos

I usually prefer to learn how to do something by reading an article or a book, but in this case, I get more from video. It helps me to see cause and effect in quasi-real time.

How to Make Instagram Stories – Tips & Tricks

This Techboomers video is broken into two parts. One is for novices, the other is for more experienced Story creators. At the start of the video, the instructor tells you where on the timeline you’ll find advanced instructions for adding more bells and whistles to your Stories.

I like that this one shows the process without a distracting human on screen.

How to Easily Create Attractive Instagram Stories

Speaking of distracting humans, that’s what you’ll find on this video from Social Media Examiner, another excellent source of marketing information.

While I found the presenter’s effervescence a bit overwhelming, she does a great job of walking us through this in a way that’s clear and understandable. And I love the time-saving and mistake-preventing tips in her instruction.

Be sure to watch this one if videos help you.

Tools

I love any tool that takes me through a process that’s new or intimidating to me. I found a couple that I think you’ll like as much as I do.

VistaCreate

VistaCreate offers a “point-and-click” design tool. The best news (for me, anyway), is that you can use it on a computer, not just a phone. That’s music to my boomer ears.

Create a free account, then get started. The site walks you through the process step-by-step, starting with selecting a template from its collection. This is the first tool I’m going to use for Build Book Buzz.

Canva’s Instagram Story Creator

If you already use Canva, you know that it starts with a template. In addition to linking to templates, this Canva link gives you an overview of all the options you can use to create Stories there .

I like using Canva, so after I’ve created a few with VistaCreate, I’m going to try Canva, too.

Instagram for Business Kit

I’ve downloaded several free templates for different types of content from Hubspot before, so I wasn’t surprised to see the company offers them for Instagram Stories, too.

It has partnered with Talkwalker (I use its version of Google Alerts) to create an “Instagram for Business Kit” mentioned above. When you download that, the system takes you to another page where you can also download eight Instagram Stories templates and 14 post templates.

Author examples and ideas

How Authors Use Instagram Stories to Connect with Readers

BookBub lists 16 Story content ideas with examples of each. Ideas include sharing sneak peeks of an upcoming book and asking for reader opinions.

I also recommend subscribing to the BookBub Partners Blog (partners = authors). You’ll receive an email every time there’s a new article.

Instagram Stories for Writers

In addition to sharing visual examples, writer Susan Shiney links to the Instagram accounts of several author Instagram accounts that she admires.

100 Instagram Story Ideas for Authors

Self-publishing services provider Shayla Raquel lists 100 ideas broken down into nine categories. Bookmark this link and you’ll never be at a loss for ideas.

My commitment

In order to get better at creating Instagram Stories, I need to create more of them.

So, I’m committing today to creating at least one Story a week for my Build Book Buzz account. I’ll create some from my phone and I’ll use some of the tools listed here, too.

Want to join me? 

If you want to join me, drop a link to your author account in the comments so I can follow you. Tell us what you’ll commit to.

Later, when you’ve been blogging for a couple of years, you might be stumped again, wondering if you’ve covered everything relevant already.

If you’ve spent more time than you’d like wondering what to write about recently, you will welcome the Blog Topic Generator tool from HubSpot.

It is incredibly easy to use.

All you need are 3 words

Simply type three words you want to blog about — preferably nouns — into the form, select “give me blog topics,” and see what happens.

Naturally, the software isn’t perfect and you might have to tweak the resulting topics a bit, but geez, on some days it sure beats thinking!

I gave it a try, using these words:

1. blog
2. topic
3. ideas

and here’s what I got:

The words I selected for my test were weak (if not dumb), so the results aren’t as specific as they need to be. That’s my fault. Even so, I can still do a lot with this list.

Here’s how I might adjust those topics so they work for me:

• 5 tools everyone in the book marketing industry should be using
• 10 things your competitors can teach you about book marketing
• 10 quick tips for book marketing
• The history of book marketing
• 14 common misconceptions about book marketing

Productive, right?

Test #2 — better!

This first test gave me an idea of how the software works, which helped me do a better job with my second test. For that one, I entered my three favorite topics:

1. book marketing
2. book promotion
3. book publicity

The results are pretty cool:

Would I have ever paired Miley Cyrus with book publicity? Probably not — but I see the potential in “Miley Cyrus and book publicity: 10 surprising things they have in common” and might just give it some thought.

The lists generated by this cool tool can be used for newsletter and magazine articles, or for free downloads you offer subscribers to your e-mail list, too.

The potential is impressive, so give it a try and tell us what you think in the comments here. Do you have other tools or strategies for generating blog topics? Please share them here.

Please see Exhibit A from Adams County Winery in Gettysburg, Penn., on the right.

This was posted on the winery’s Facebook page on Saturday, as most of us Northeasterners were stocking up on bottled water, bread, and D batteries or pulling out candles and matches. It went viral quickly — note the number of “likes” but more importantly, the number of “shares” — 10,666 as of Tuesday afternoon.

I snagged it on Sunday from a friend in Northern New Jersey after seeing it in my news feed. (I’m in the six-bottle zone, by the way.)

Shrewd. Very shrewd

I reacted to this smart infographic on two levels. First, as someone getting ready for who-knows-what with this storm, it made me laugh. It was so clever!

But it also caught my attention as a marketer. I thought it was very shrewd of them to capitalize on the hype while giving us useful information (I did need to know how much red wine to have on hand if I lost power). I tried calling the winery today to learn more about the back story and whether they were surprised by the response, but the company’s phone was out of service because of the storm.

There’s actually a third reason this caught my attention. I’m fascinated by infographics and how they can be used to convey statistics and other information in ways that make it easier to understand. I’ve never been a fan of bar graphs and pie charts, but infographics? They work for me!

Can you put them to work for you? What information related to your book or its topic can be turned into a useful or humorous infographic that will get shared through social networks? I’ll bet you can think of something. It might take some thought, and maybe a brainstorming session with a friend or two, but I’ll bet you can come up with an idea for at least one infographic — if not more.

“How to Easily Create Infographics in PowerPoint”

Once you’ve given that some thought, the next challenge is to create it. That seems a bit overwhelming for those of us who aren’t graphic artists and don’t have their design tools, doesn’t it?

That’s how I felt about it, anyway, until I received an e-mail from Hubspot this morning offering me a copy of “Free Template: How to Easily Create Infographics in PowerPoint.”  I’ve downloaded it, clicked through the slides, and can’t wait to give it a try (download it here). It’s like putting a puzzle together — a puzzle that can come together in many ways.

Start watching for infographics and how companies are using them to grab attention and communicate information. Let it all percolate for a bit, then start thinking about how you can incorporate this type of marketing image into your book promotion plan. With the right visual, it could be one of your most successful tactics.

What new marketing tactic have you tried that you’re excited about?